New Orleans

Steve had business in New Orleans last week from Monday-Wednesday. We decided it would be fun for me to join him and have a few kid-free days together. So we drove to L.A. to stay with my parents, Steve flew out Sunday and I joined him on Wednesday. I had pretty low expectations of New Orleans, but I loved it! The weather was yucky, but other then that we had a great time.

French Quarter:

The French Quarter is in the down town area and parts of it (Bourbon Street) are sleazy, i.e, lots of strip joints. With the exception of Bourbon Street I thought the French Quarter was beautiful. Everything was so old, 1700's old. The buildings had so much character and charm. The night life was alive with jazz and the voodoo fortune tellers.

St. Louis Cathedral 

Darling little houses

One of the oldest structures in New Orleans, 1722. Orignially a blacksmith shop, now a bar of course!

There are gas lanterns all over the French Quarter. I loved how they all looked at night. 

Food:

All I have to say is AMAZING. I wish we had had a few more days there just to eat! I wasn't sure how I'd like it because I'm not a seafood, or deep fried type girl. There was plenty of variety for people like me. Lots of blacked meats and unique spices. I'd highly recommend New Orleans for the food alone.


Cemeteries:

Because the water table is so high, the dead have to be buried above ground. There are tons of old, cool cemeteries all over the city.

The Garden District:

The Garden District is an area with all of the big, beautiful New Orleans homes. A lot of them were owned by wealthy plantation owners and were used in the off season for socializing. We got a little book that guided us on a walking tour. Very fun.

Lower Ninth Ward:

The Lower Ninth Ward is the part of New Orleans that was hit the hardest with Katrina. I'd say out of all the houses maybe half are still standing, and out of that half a quarter have been re-done and are habitable. The other quarter are falling apart. They're not even boarded up or anything. It was sad to see so many empty lots, with just a foundation and to know that there used to be a house there. It is a very poor neighborhood and many of it's residents didn't want to go back and re-build after Katrina. What's crazy is there is only 4-5 miles between the Garden District and Lower Ninth Ward.

Southern Plantations:

We ventured 1 1/2 hours out of the city to checkout a few plantations. On our way we stopped for fast food and was reminded that we were in the deep south. We could hardly understand the accents...I'm so glad we took the time. The few plantations we saw were beautiful. We toured only one, the Laura Creole Plantation. It was a great tour, lots of cool history behind it.

Laura Plantation. (Creole plantations were painted bright colors, while  European plantations were the standard white with pillars.) 

Real slave quarters on the Laura Plantation

Oak Alley Plantation. 

Cool fact we learned. All the plantations along the Mississippi River faced the river and usually had a long row of trees on either side. This created a wind tunnel effect to help cool the houses. Wouldn't it have been a sight to float down the river in those days and look left to right at all the beautiful plantation houses? The slavery thing would probably ruin it though. =)

Oak Alley behind us.

What we didn't have time for: 


I wish we would have had one more day to check out a swamp. I would have loved to have gone on a flat bottom boat and see alligators. Funny sidenote: Steve was talking with some local guys at his conference saying that it looks like they have a lot of great places to water ski. They looked at him like he was crazy and informed him he would be if he tried...Alligators of course is the reason. I think 3 full days would have been perfect.